Far Cry 3 single-player preview – holiday shooting

GameCentral goes hands-on with Far Cry 3’s story campaign, with a sight-seeing trip featuring stunning landscapes and very unpleasant pirates.

Far Cry 3 – piracy is theft

It seems ages ago now since we first played Far Cry 3 , although we never understood at the time why Ubisoft were focusing their initial previews on the multiplayer. There were some interesting ideas, particularly Firestorm mode, but nothing to make us think the time and money wouldn’t have been better spent beefing up the single-player. But now that we’ve played that too a lack of content hardly seems a problem…

Far Cry is an odd franchise, that we get the impression Ubisoft didn’t quite know what to do with when original developer Crytek (now of Crysis fame) jumped ship after the first game. At that point Far Cry was a technical showcase not just for its graphics but also its open world environment and (arguably) advanced artificial intelligence. Far Cry 2 was not a bad game by any means but its African setting never managed to recreate the same sense of oppressive danger.

Far Cry 3 returns to an island setting and even though it’s meant to be one situated in a different ocean looks suspiciously similar to the original game. We didn’t see much of the story elements of the game, when we had our half hour hands-on at Gamescom, but its basics are by now well known: a bunch of horny teens end up on a tropical island full of deranged pirates and the locals they prey upon.

If there’s anything more to the story beyond trying to escape we’re not sure, but the section we played involved sabotaging a radar jammer atop a radio mast. The pirates were using it to underline their control over the local villagers and, more importantly, to block the in-game map.

Starting out in a friendly village we can see the mast up on a nearby hill, but with no obnoxious arrows or heads-up displays pointing the way we’re clear to make our own way up there. The village contains a couple of shops but handily we’re already kitted out with a bow and arrow and a few other weapons, so we elect to go on a ramble and away from any pre-existing paths.

Pretty quickly this brings us in contact with both a small deer and some stunningly beautiful graphics. The deer we shot with a bow and the graphics we ogled for their near photorealism. We felt a bit bad about not doing things the other way round, but the softly spoken Frenchmen whispering in our ear was insisting that you can kill animals for their skin and meat and we wanted to make sure he wasn’t lying.

Much like Skyrim there are also various plants and flowers that you can use and sell, but while playing around in the shrubbery we did notice that larger leaves and bushes still don’t move as you touch them. Instead you seem to phase magically through them, which is no doubt a limitation of the Xbox 360 hardware we were playing on but we do look forwards to that sort of thing reacting a lot more realistically in the next generation.

In any case we then decide to get on with the job in hand and cresting the top of the hill we make the long climb up the radio tower. As we do so the view gets more and more impressive, especially as we know that everything we can see can be explored on foot – from the nearby beaches to the far away mountains.

Smashing the radar jammer proves an easy task and instantly the map splutters into life, showing that the area of the demo we are playing is just a small percentage of the full game. To prove how big even that slice is though we climb back down and… are immediately assaulted by a group of pirates.

Despite the huge game world and open-ended objectives Far Cry 3 is still a first person shooter at heart, and a perfectly competent one at that. Although we did have a machinegun we decided to stick with the bow and arrow, rather than attract the attention of any more pirates. Pulling back the bow for a more powerful shot and collecting the arrow after is hugely satisfying, and the pirates a much more deserving recipient for our arrows than the hapless wildlife.

Although we were upset we didn’t have any Molotov cocktails, as apparently setting fire to the grass is still a legitimate tactic for dealing with large groups of enemies. Since that wasn’t an option we decide to do the next best thing and run away. Luckily there’s a car nearby so we jump into that and drive off to find a hang-glider, which we can see blinking away tantalisingly on our mini-map.

The glider is by an ocean cliff and just above a pirate fort, which seems an obvious next target for our island-liberating holidayer. Getting the glider going is extremely easy and flying around proves an enjoyably serene experience compared to the bloodshed and violence on the ground. But as we circle back to the fort we try to drop into the ocean for a beach assault, but we do so too near to a pirate patrol vehicle and are quickly shot and killed.

Trying again we forgo the glider and begin to circle around the camp, feeling pretty pleased with our stealth skills as we evade another patrol in the long undergrowth. Unfortunately a pack of wild dogs aren’t so easily fooled and although they’re easily dispatched the noise alerts the pirates and we’re again killed.

The extra caution of our third foray is rewarded though and we slowly sidle up to the fort with our bow and arrow, looking to do some Rambo style damage to the clearly visible sentries. This goes well but one of the pirates gets away and runs to set off an alarm (‘I should have said that was there’, exclaims our French guide guilty.)

As we’re murder-ised by the incoming reinforcements though it’s just as our half hour is up and we feel satisfied with our achievements. Ubisoft should do too, with what is a clear improvement on the last game and a useful evolution of the first. Whether it can maintain a suitable variety in its objectives and storytelling we won’t be able to tell until the final game, but for now Far Cry 3’s island paradise is one of the prettiest places to be killed in all gaming.